Stephanie Williams, who serves as Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), welcomed the Foreign Affairs Council’s decision to establish a new mission whose primary objective will be to monitor the arms embargo on Libya (see EUROPE 12427/4).
She explained that this is a “positive first step” in a videoconference during a hearing in the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Defence on Tuesday, 18 February, adding that “there has been no monitoring of the embargo to date”. EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia has, however, had a UN mandate for such monitoring since 2016 (see EUROPE 11573/20).
“[There] are violations by land, sea, and air, but it needs to be monitored”, stressed Mrs Williams. She also urged: “We must stop this deluge of weapons into Libya if we want to achieve a comprehensive, lasting ceasefire.”
“We control the sea, but the weapons are primarily coming by land or air. In concrete terms, having a naval mission also means deploying radar, but one could never have imagined deploying a monitoring mission along Libya’s border with Egypt”, explained Rosamaria Gili, head of division at the European External Action Service for the Middle East and North Africa. However, according to her, military experts are convinced of the deterrent power of naval forces and satellites.
UN Special Envoy to Libya Ghassan Salamé had expressed his thoughts from Geneva earlier in the day, saying that “whoever can help in monitoring the arms embargo is welcome”. He declared, “If it is done by the Europeans or by others, it is [...] not my problem” before calling on all “Member States of the United Nations [to] come to the rescue [by] monitoring the violations of the arms embargo; otherwise, it will not end”.
Speaking to EUROPE, David McAllister (EPP, Germany)—who chairs the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs—welcomed the creation of the new EU mission. “This is an important task. We need this mission to be a success. Far too many weapons have been brought into Libya and are still there”, he emphasised. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)